"We all grow better in sunshine and love."
For the past nineteen years, nearly twenty, I've been in love with a little girl and watched her grow. My firstborn niece. My little Sammyantha. Only she's not so little anymore.
In two weeks, she'll become a wife and then one day possibly a mother of her own children. It is a struggle for me to figure out where all those years went. That little baby girl who threw her bottle into the Spokane River and sent her Auntie in after it. Or whenever "Wink" by Neal McCoy came on would dance up and down uncontrollably from the first opening beat in her little diapered tushie. The same little girl who asked for her favorite Reba song, Till You Love Me, by so sweetly asking "Want Sunlight Moonlight!" Or the same little girl that when I asked her which shoes we should buy her to match her new dress wanted the "black ones that make noise!" She was and is nothing less than a most special and charming little baby girl.
But when I turned away for but a moment, somehow, that beautiful little baby I held in my arms all those tender years grew. The little girl who I tucked into my bed to sleep or held in my arms on the bus against my chest as she breathed ever so sweetly in and out calmly trusting me as she slept. Oh how I long for those days one more time.
My little Sammy is all grown up. And I for one wish she wasn't because I haven't been as much a part of her life the last ten years as I was the first ten - not even close. But I hope she knows how much I love her and think of her every day even if I don't always say it and even if I live thousands of miles away.
But the best part of it all is I will get to tell her in person in a couple of weeks. This Auntie has herself a wedding to attend. I can't wait to hold her in my arms just one more time before the man that stole her heart holds her forever as his wife.
Is this how my mom felt when I got married all those years ago? It has to be. I'm not even this little girl's mommy and it is killing me. Forgive me if I cry. Forgive me if she is still that little baby girl in my eyes.
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